Burial

28

Nathan carried the binbag along the tree-lined street of Victorian bedsitters.

At the corner, it joined a main road. A yellow skip stood outside the gutted shell of a house in the early stages of renovation. The skip was half full of plasterboard and broken bricks and rusty wire frames. It was still early. Nathan leaned in, lifted a piece of plasterboard and wedged the binbag in the bottom corner of the skip. Then he dusted his hands and turned on to the main road.

At the bus stop, he paused to open his Adidas sports bag. He removed the pack of Nurofen Plus and dry-swallowed a handful.

There was a greasy spoon across the road. Nathan half-jogged over to it. His legs were stiff, on the edge of cramp. Inside, there was the sound of frying and hot water jets and local radio. He ordered a full breakfast and a mug of tea and sat down with a copy of yesterday's Sun. When the breakfast arrived, he looked at it without conviction. But hunger found him. He ate the breakfast and drained the tea and hoisted his bag on to his shoulder. He left the cafe and caught the bus home.

It was full daylight when he opened the door. The house was quiet. He could smell Holly's perfume in the hallway. A floorboard creaked, the house warming to the new day. He set down his bag by the telephone and stared at the photos on the wall. He could not connect that laughing girl to the cracked remains in Bob's freezer. He reached out, to straighten a frame. But he couldn't touch her. He thought of those rattling teeth, loose in the skull. And those clean limbs, gnawed at by foxes and badgers and local dogs drawn to the scent of rot.

He couldn't go upstairs.

He put the kettle on, and the television. While he waited for the kettle to boil, he sat in the armchair and fell asleep.

In the dream, he awoke. Elise was in the room with him. She didn't say anything. She was on the sofa, legs crossed. She looked at him. He felt a swell of love for her, as he might for a lost child.

He said, 'I'm so sorry.'

Elise said, 'I'm cold,' and then she began to scream.

Nathan woke in the act of wetting himself. The warm-cold stain spread across his crotch and thigh.

He moved to the centre of the room and stood there with his back to the bay window, until his queasily thrashing heart had slowed. He stood there so long that twice he nodded off, his head dropping to his chest. He saw Elise tearing at her hair, hanks of it in her fists.

He jerked awake and sat on the windowsill. The television was meaningless and brash.

He stayed there until 1 p.m. He walked to the kitchen. With every footstep he glanced over his shoulder. Each creak of the house made his heart lurch.

He opened the fridge. Looked at the eggs and the cold meats and the milk and the remains of a chicken, the half-drunk bottle of wine.

He closed the fridge door. Got himself a glass of water. He was shivering.

He went to the thermostat and turned up the heating.

He was asleep, face down on the dining table, when Holly got home.

Her smile fell.

'My God, are you all right?'

Opening one eye, he said, 'Heavy night.'

He wanted her to lower him into a hot bath, to let the heat seep into his frozen bones that felt like rods of cold steel inside him: he wanted her to wash his hair with her fragrant shampoo, and he wanted her to wrap him in a warm towel, and then he wanted to undress her, her warmth and her softness, and he wanted to smell her and he wanted to make love to her; he wanted to make her pregnant, he wanted to make a little comma of life, something to double and increase in the secret heat, the pink half-light inside her.

'What happened? Where did you go?'

He waved a hand. His fingernails were dirty.

'We went to the pub. And then back to Bob's. It all got a bit out of control. He had some drugs. Some cocaine. We were up all night.'

'It looks like it.'

She went to the kitchen: brisk and businesslike.

'Have you eaten?'

'Yes.'

'Eaten what?'

'I went to a cafe.'

Are you hungry now?'

'No.'

'Right.'

She slammed the fridge door.

'Holly, I'm sorry.'

'There's no need.'

'I've got this problem.'

She hesitated.

'With cocaine. I'm not an addict or anything. But I've got a problem with it.'

'What sort of problem?'

'Saying no. Knowing when to stop. How to stop.'

'You never even mentioned drugs to me.'

'Because I stay away from them. I just -- y'know. I was drunk. And my judgement was off. Believe me, I'm paying for it now.'

She looked at him with something like pity. A knot of hope rose in him. Pity was good. He could start at pity and work up.

She said, 'I tried it a couple of times. Cocaine. I didn't like it much.

It made my heart all biddy boom.'

He said, 'You're a dark horse.'

'Well. There's a lot about me you don't know.'

'I don't doubt it.'

'Good.'

He lay cold in the dark with his wife asleep beside him. When he cuddled up to her she made a sleepy noise and rolled away.

At some point, he must have slept because he woke in the dark.

Holly was raising herself above him. Her hair tickled his face. Her nipples brushed his chest. She was shaking his shoulder.

'Are you all right?'

'Why?'

'You were talking in your sleep.'

A fluorescence of terror.

'What did I say?'

'I don't know. You were mumbling.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I'm worried, that's all.'

'I'm fine.'

'Is it the drugs?'

'Probably.'

'Don't touch them again.'

'No chance.'

'Your feet are freezing.'

'I know. It's cold in here.'

'It's boiling. It's like somebody turned up the thermostat.'

He'd forgotten about that.

'Anyway,' she said. 'Get some sleep.'

"I'm sorry.

'Don't be silly.' She turned over. She reached behind her and cupped his flaccid cock and balls in her hand. She gave them a friendly, gentle squeeze, and fell back to sleep.

She phoned her parents and told them Nathan was too fragile for Sunday lunch. So they stayed home and Nathan had a long, very hot bath. With each tick of the clock, it got further behind him. Time - a few more days, weeks, years - would push it inside him like a prolapse.

On Sunday night, as he showered and shaved and cleaned his teeth and laid out tomorrow's work clothes on the bed, he felt something like confidence, almost pleasure. It had been bad. It was still bad. But eventually it would go away.

Sometimes he believed this for minutes at a time. Then he remembered what lay bundled up in the freezer, in Bob's garage, and the chill crept back into him.

Monday morning, he went to work.

Everything was the same: there was reception and there were Fiona and Maude, the receptionists. Here were the pot plants on either side of the lift doors, and here was the same lateral scratch across the door, like a key-vandalized car. And here was the first floor. Take the first turning on the left for the sales department. And here was the same open-plan office with the same furniture and the same computers, smudged with inky fingerprints. Here were the same novelty gonks and teddy bears and amusing mugs and family photographs, and here were the same staff, and here was the same glass-fronted office with the same laptop computer, and here were the same problems, the same cock-ups and blunders and lost orders and pissed-off reps, the same staff complaints and affairs and annual appraisals, the same marketing meetings and board meetings and finance meetings, and here was the same Justin, the same mendacious, pitiful Justin with his too-short trousers and his six-pint lunches and his little breath mints, and this was the calm place the dread had dumped him -- this was the place that did not change, and as long as he was here, he was safe.

Two weeks later, Bob called.